Source: ZME Science (MSN), Tibi Puiu
Photo: Unsplash © ZME Science

Step outside in any major city on a blistering summer afternoon, and you will smell it. It is the distinct, heavy scent of hot asphalt.

We pave our modern world with it. If you gathered all the pavement in Phoenix, Arizona, and piled it into one place, it would blanket San Francisco four times over. Roads and parking lots cover roughly 40% of the Arizona capital.

They absorb the sun’s heat by day and radiate it by night. And that’s a problem because this urban heat island effect drives up energy use and makes cities swelter.

But scientists now warn that the real threat lies hidden in the fumes.

As petroleum-based roads age and bake in the sun, they release toxic, microscopic vapors that infiltrate our lungs and bloodstreams.

Now, an international coalition of engineers and biologists has proposed a radical, green solution. They want to replace the crude oil in our roads with fast-growing algae.

This bio-bitumen should cut carbon emissions, but, most importantly, it captures the worst toxic fumes, heals its own cracks in freezing weather, and could completely transform how we build the arteries of our civilization.

The Hidden Cost of the Open Road

Historically, sustainable road and pavement design mostly focused on the carbon footprint. Elham Fini wants us to look closer to home.

Fini serves as a senior scientist at Arizona State University’s Global Futures Laboratory. For her, the health impacts of our built environment demand urgent attention.

“To make something truly sustainable,” she said, “you cannot ignore the human side of it.”

Fini spent years investigating why asphalt crumbles. Asphalt consists mostly of crushed rock and sand. To hold it all together, builders use bitumen — a black, sticky sludge left over from refining crude oil.

When bitumen breaks down, it releases volatile organic compounds. These carbon-based vapors escape continuously. On hot, bright days, they spike.

In the short term, breathing them leaves people dizzy and gasping for air. Over time, construction workers who inhale these fumes face a sharply elevated risk of lung cancer.

Worse, the danger grows as the road ages. Recent studies show that ultraviolet sunlight and heat change the chemical profile of bitumen. The aging pavement starts emitting smaller, more toxic, and often completely odorless compounds.

These tiny molecules easily breach our body’s defenses. They slip into arteries and travel directly to vital organs. Tests and models link these specific emissions to significant neurological damage, especially in women and elderly people.

“Heat is worsening the situation,” Fini said. “It’s exacerbating the emissions from asphalt.”

So, how do we fix a material that covers millions of miles of the Earth’s surface?

The answer might surprisingly lie in the nearest puddle.

Algae grow with terrifying speed. Some species double their entire mass in a single day.

They act as nature’s ultimate carbon sponges. Through photosynthesis, they suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and trap it in organic matter. A single acre of cultivated algae yields up to ten times more biomass than a field of corn or soybeans.

But how does a green, watery plant become thick, black road tar? Some experimental studies have used a process called hydrothermal liquefaction. They essentially put harvested algae into a high-tech pressure cooker.

This mimics the immense heat and pressure the Earth uses to turn ancient organic matter into crude oil over millions of years. But instead of waiting epochs, scientists produce a rich bio-oil in mere hours.

They refine this bio-oil into bio-bitumen, just like the traditional variety is made from fossil fuel. Even better, we do not need pristine drinking water or fertile farmland to grow the raw material.

Fini teamed up with Peter Lammers, a chief scientist at the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation, to cultivate specific algae strains. They feed the algae using wastewater straight from a Phoenix treatment plant.

“It’s a great setup,” Lammers said, “because we use water that’s far too high in nitrogen and phosphorus to be released anywhere. And instead, we reuse it to grow more algae.”

Fini then bakes this algae in a low-oxygen oven. She creates a sticky binder that road crews can easily fold into standard asphalt mixes.

Freezing Winters and Self-Healing Streets

You might wonder if roads made from algae can survive a harsh winter. It turns out they handle the cold far better than traditional petroleum.

In a recent study led by researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and ASU, scientists tested how algae-infused pavement handles subzero temperatures.

Adding just a 6% blend of bio-binder derived from wild-type Ulva (a common macroalgae) radically changes the physical properties of the pavement.

Petroleum asphalt turns brittle in the cold. It snaps and forms dangerous thermal cracks. But the algae bio-binder seems to make the material flexible. It absorbs the stress of heavy traffic without breaking too much.

Even more incredibly, the algae give the road a self-healing quality. It resists the deep fatigue cracking that destroys highway infrastructure.

When researchers tested a bio-oil made from another species, Haematococcus pluvialis, they watched the asphalt’s elastic recovery under heavy loads jump from a dismal 0.1% to a staggering 71%.

Moreover, every time you replace 1% of the petroleum binder with algae bio-binder, net carbon emissions drop by 3%.

Pumping, refining, and heating crude oil spews massive amounts of ancient, trapped carbon dioxide into the air. Algae do the exact opposite. As they grow, these tiny plants act like microscopic trees. They breathe in and suck carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere to build their cells. When engineers bake those harvested algae into a bio-binder, they permanently lock that captured carbon inside the sticky black material.

Theoretically, if a city paves a road using a 33% bio-binder blend, that road achieves total carbon neutrality. Push the blend higher, and the highway actively removes more carbon from the environment than it creates.

Turning Down the Toxicity

But what about the deadly fumes? Does adding green algae solve the neurological and respiratory threats posed by black tar?

Fini and her colleagues at the Mayo Clinic are working hard to answer that exact question. They want strict protections for communities and construction crews. And they believe the algae binder provides an immediate shield.

Lab tests on algae-infused asphalt have been promising. While it does not entirely stop the road from releasing vapors, it traps the most dangerous ones.

The algae binder locks in the highly toxic compounds that penetrate human arteries. Tests show that incorporating the algae drops the overall toxicity of the asphalt emissions by roughly 100-fold.

Furthermore, the algae slow down the natural degradation of the pavement. The road stays intact longer and releases fewer fumes, requires less maintenance, and costs cash-strapped cities far less money over its lifespan.

Fini is already looking beyond algae. She is experimenting with binders made from the crushed branches of forest-thinning projects.

Currently, she is collaborating with the city of Phoenix to pave an actual test section of road with the algae-infused asphalt.

Air quality experts frequently ignore the volatile organic compounds bleeding out of our sidewalks and streets. Testing these bio-roads in the intense Arizona sun will provide undeniable data.

The Long Road to Commercial Reality

For over a century, our infrastructure relied almost entirely on fossil fuels. Moving toward a bio-based economy forces us to rethink everything from the ground up.

However, challenges loom on the horizon.

Right now, producing bio-bitumen costs significantly more than pumping crude oil. Scaling up production to meet global demand requires massive investment in biorefineries.

We also need years of rigorous traffic testing to ensure these bio-roads do not fail unexpectedly under the weight of millions of commercial trucks. Real-world, practical infrastructure often behaves differently than in lab tests, no matter how well researchers design their experiments.

But the global push has already begun.

In France, the Algoroute project has successfully placed bio-bitumen on test tracks, proving that the material slashes carbon emissions by up to 70%. In the United Kingdom, construction giant Tarmac is running similar pilot projects.

Governments and private industries recognize the urgent need to divest from petroleum. And as Fini points out, the sheer scale of the opportunity demands action.

“We have 4 million miles of roads in America,” Fini said. “We should make those 4 million miles do more for us than just get from A to B.”

This story originally appeared on ZME Science. Want to get smarter every day? Subscribe to our newsletter and stay ahead with the latest science news.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/pavement-made-from-algae-could-cut-toxic-asphalt-fumes-by-100-times-and-make-roads-last-longer

Source: Fast Company, María José Gutierrez Chavez
Photo: Courtesy of Lime

The new ‘LimeBike’ feels lighter, is easier to steer, and is more comfortable for a wider range of riders.

For those of us not born tall and strong, using a shared electric bike can sometimes be cumbersome—they’re often big, heavy, and hard to maneuver. Bike-share giant Lime has taken note, releasing a new generation of bikes tailored for riders who could benefit from more accessible design.

One of the first dockless micromobility companies, Lime launched in 2017, eventually filling the streets of major cities across the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Middle East with its bright-green two-wheelers. Now the company has introduced an alternative model to its standard Gen4, designed to reach riders—particularly women and older adults—who may have found its original model challenging or intimidating.

“The new vehicle builds upon the strong foundation of what is already working well,” Jason Parrish, Lime’s senior director of product management, tells Fast Company.

Lime piloted its new design in July 2024 in Atlanta, Seattle, and Zurich, with an official release in April last year. The model, called a “LimeBike,” is not meant to replace the Gen4, but rather serve as a complement to the company’s bike-share services, offering an alternative for riders.

LimeBikes are currently in circulation domestically in Atlanta, Seattle, and Nashville, and globally in Munich, Paris, Berlin, and other cities.

A rider-friendly redesign

The LimeBike model came about based on feedback from riders and city officials from around the world who said they wanted bike sharing to feel more approachable and accessible to a wider range of riders, especially those who are shorter in stature or have more restricted range of motion.

Compared to the original model, the LimeBike feels lighter, has a more compact frame, a lower step-through, and smaller, 20-inch tires. The designers also moved the bike’s battery under the seat to shift its center of gravity, and introduced an ergonomic seat clamp to ease height adjustments. These details make the bike more comfortable to get on and off of, steer, and ride.

“We wanted to keep the great ergonomic ride feel that our riders love about the Gen4 bike, but do it in a new way that makes the vehicle feel more approachable and accessible,” Parrish says. “The result is that while the frame changed, the rider geometry of the bike [distance between seat, pedals, and handlebars] was maintained from the Gen4.”

The redesign also addresses safety concerns.

As the blog London Centric reported, a number of Lime riders in the U.K. have suffered broken legs, which some attribute to the Gen4 e-bike’s heavy design. Some riders are pursuing legal action against the company.

The redesign features details that will improve trips for all riders, like a new phone holder, wider front basket, and advanced location-recognition accuracy so they don’t accidentally leave the bike in a no-parking zone.

“The updates focus on making the LimeBike more approachable, intuitive. and practical for everyday use,” Parrish says.

Longer-lasting bikes

The redesign doesn’t solve only rider pain points. It also extends each bike’s lifespan by featuring modular elements that make replacing parts easier and quicker. Additionally, the bike is made with some of the same parts as the LimeGlider, the company’s e-scooter, making inventory management more efficient.

“By building the two vehicles together, we were able to create a unified product experience for riders, simplify spare parts management and maintenance, and release two vehicles at once to drive innovation in our fleet,” Parrish says.

As the fleet and offerings continue to expand, so do options for sustainable urban travel. According to UCLA Transportation, swapping a car ride for a bike ride can lower an individual’s emissions by 67%. Accessible scooter and bike designs are providing a greener option for riders regardless of their body type.

The extended deadline for Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards is Friday, April 17, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maria Jose Gutierrez Chavez is a trending news writer for Fast Company. She was previously the the editorial fellow at Inc. and Fast Company.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91524534/lime-limebike-redesign

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: Olivier Djiann/Getty Images, Noppasinw/Adobe Stock, Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images

Over the last 12 years, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo fundamentally reshaped the City of Lights. As she leaves office, this is the story of how she reclaimed the city’s public spaces from cars, covered the city with trees, and made it a cycling paradise.

It’s 8:45am on a rainy weekday morning in Paris, and I’m standing in what used to be a traffic lane in a busy neighborhood near the city’s largest train stations. Less than a block away, cars are streaming by in the rush hour commute. But here, workers have torn up the pavement and replaced it with a newly-planted park with trees, a protected bike lane, and a wide gravel path for pedestrians. Where cars once drove, someone is walking his dog.

It’s one of hundreds of streets in Paris that have been redesigned over the past decade as the city radically transformed to reduce pollution and make neighborhoods more livable. In front of elementary schools, around 300 streets have been closed to cars. Last year, voters approved a plan to close another 500 streets to traffic. Thousands of parking spots have been swapped for trees. More than 900 miles of bike lanes now thread through the city. On the Rue de Rivoli, a major road that at one point had seven lanes dedicated to traffic and parking, the city flipped the street: most of it now belongs to bikes, with only a single lane left for cars.

As I walked around the new park, a crowd of city officials gathered for an opening ceremony. I asked someone nearby what the area had looked like before, and he pulled blueprints out of his briefcase to show me. A traffic island had been surrounded by a sprawling roundabout. On the western side of the intersection, there were multiple lanes of traffic and rows of parked cars on each side. The new park replaced that entire part of the street.

It was the last official event for Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, a few days before the next mayoral election. Over two terms in office, from 2014 to 2026, Hidalgo led one of the fastest and most comprehensive street redesign campaigns ever attempted in a major global city.

“This project is symbolic of what we’ve done over the last 12 years, reshaping the streets and the city,” Christophe Najovski, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of green spaces and biodiversity, told me. “This used to be a roundabout where cars were turning around. Now it’s a real square. Pedestrians can enjoy the space that was formerly given to cars. We’ve planted a little urban forest with more than 100 trees. This is what we’re trying to make: a city for the people, and also a city that will be adapted to climate change.”

In other cities known for their commitment to cycling, like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, bike and pedestrian infrastructure evolved incrementally over decades. Hidalgo pushed major changes forward despite opposition from drivers and some residents. At the event, she listed some of the city’s related projects, like the Place du Catalogne, where another sprawling concrete roundabout is now filled with hundreds of trees. “There are many people who would tell you that this was not possible,” Hidalgo said in her remarks. “But we persevered.”

This is the story of how urban innovation can happen quickly at a large scale, and how a leader used political risk-taking and moments of crisis to force change in a legacy system dominated by cars. For other car-centric cities, it’s an example of how streets can begin to be reclaimed for people.

Making the case for fewer cars

When Hidalgo first ran for mayor, air quality was at the heart of her campaign. She recognized that pollution from diesel cars was a public health crisis—Parisians were dying prematurely because of the city’s smog, which was among the worst in Europe. She argued that pollution wasn’t something that citizens should have to live with, and that leaders had a moral obligation to change it. The answer, she said, was to have fewer cars on the road.

Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo on the bank of Seine, 2017. [Photo: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images] “Unparalleled challenges like air pollution require unprecedented action,” she told me in 2017. “These policies are based on the urgency of both the health crisis and the climate crisis we are facing.”

From the beginning, Hidalgo faced pushback as she began remaking Paris’s streets in her fight for cleaner air. One of her first moves was immediately controversial: she closed a highway along the Seine that was used by around 40,000 cars each day and opened the road to pedestrians instead. Critics warned it would make it harder for commuters to reach the city and worsen congestion elsewhere. (Overall, studies have found that the project didn’t end up making traffic worse.)

“She was totally unpopular,” says Carlos Moreno, the Sorbonne professor who has worked with Hidalgo on the idea of the 15-minute city—the idea that cities should be designed in a way that everyone is a short walk or bike ride from work, stores, and whatever else they might need in daily life. Opponents challenged the road’s closure in court, though ultimately lost.

Business owners have also pushed back against bike lanes, pedestrianization projects, and the loss of parking spaces, saying that they’d lose customers. (Evidence shows that bike lanes and pedestrianization can actually help local businesses.) Others have called Hidalgo authoritarian, arguing that she forces projects forward without enough input from residents and businesses. Drivers have complained about every project, including the newest park. The media continually criticized her, saying that her plans were unrealistic and impractical. In surveys, citizens often opposed her work to reduce cars.

She pushed ahead anyway. “It takes a certain personality type to put yourself through that, but those are the transformational leaders,” says Chris Bruntlett from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, a nonprofit that studies bike-friendly cities. “When you get to the other side of the controversy, inevitably, it’s a better place for everybody.”

Hidalgo has always been a fighter. Her working-class family immigrated to France from Spain when Hidalgo was two years old. When a teacher told her that little Spanish girls couldn’t make it to the top of the class, that motivated her to prove the teacher wrong. Later, after studying labor law, she worked as a labor inspector, building a successful career in a field dominated by men.

By 2001, she became deputy mayor in Paris under Bertrand Delanoë, focused on urban planning, including climate and mobility policies that later became part of her own campaign. When she was elected in 2014, she became the city’s first female mayor, with a platform that included affordable housing and equality along with sustainable development and air quality.

As part of the transformation on streets, Hidalgo has been adept at choosing her messages carefully. “She’s not talking about bicycle lanes,” says Stein van Oosteren, a local bike advocate. “She’s talking about making sure that 10-year-old children can go to school safely without bothering their parents. She’s talking about a different city. She has the intelligence not to talk about technical things. She’s talking about livability.”

She’s also motivated by climate change, but has talked more about the health benefits of reducing air pollution, a more obvious issue for residents. The lesson: “Pick your message and stick to it as a leader,” says Mike Lydon, principal at the New York-based urban design agency Street Plans. “I think that’s what this administration did so well. If you want to make transformative changes, stick to the why and hammer that message over and over.”

When Hidalgo ran for reelection in 2020, she doubled down on her work to reduce driving, running on a platform focused on Moreno’s 15-minute city. That involves not just improving bike lanes, but making sure that amenities are spread throughout the city, including green space. (Her work eventually also included boosting neighborhood businesses, so people could more easily access stores and services without traveling long distances.) In a field with multiple candidates, she won around 50% of the vote, with an 18% margin over the closest rival.

“When I was re-elected, many people said, ‘Oh, what a surprise,’ but it wasn’t a surprise for me,” she said in Women Changing Cities, a book by Bruntlett and his wife Melissa Bruntlett. “Why? Because I know we have two parallel levels at work. The lobbies of men who were very angry at me because of the removal of cars from Paris, and the people. It was this latter level, the women and young people, who voted for me. So, I can say, ‘Okay, the future is with us.’” Last year, when the city held a referendum asking whether another 500 streets to be pedestrianized, it passed with a 60% vote.

In the latest election on March 22, her former deputy Emmanuel Grégoire won, suggesting Parisians still support Hidalgo’s policies. The work she started is likely to continue growing. “This bodes incredibly well for a range of the city’s programs under Hidalgo, including bike lanes and school streets,” says Marcel Moran, an urban planning professor at San Jose State University who has studied the transformation in Paris.

Even the most conservative candidate, who argued for drivers’ rights in the past, said during the campaign that she no longer wanted to take bike lanes away. “That’s more proof of the change that’s been happening,” says Corentin Roudaut, a volunteer with Paris en Selle (“Paris in the Saddle”), a large local bike advocacy group.

When we met at the park, it was clear that Hidalgo thought the years of fighting were worth it. ”It’s very hard when you want to change lives and change people’s habits—you have to convince people, and respect their opinions. We need time if we want to change very deeply,” Hidalgo said, then turned to look at the park. “But in the end, you can see how beautiful it is.” (Her schedule as she prepared to leave office allowed only a brief interview, so this article relies on conversations with city officials and those who have tracked the city’s transformation, along with visits to neighborhoods where the changes are most apparent.)

The city’s air is also measurably cleaner. One 2025 study found that the city’s pollution levels have dropped by 50%. On my visit, my weather app said that the air was clear, with an AQI of 3 out of 500. Instead of the smell of diesel exhaust, I smelled crepes.

In 2010, only around 3% of residents biked. That’s about half the current cycling rate in Portland, Oregon. For decades, the rates in Paris were even lower, with less than 1% of residents regularly biking in the 1990s. But by 2023, bikes outnumbered cars on city streets. Now, four out of 10 Parisians bike at least once a week. If you visited Paris in the past, some parts of it might be unrecognizable now.

It’s a classic case of people showing up after a city builds the infrastructure. On the Rue de Rivoli, there are now more than 20,000 cyclists each day, from parents picking up children from preschool to businesspeople in suits and heels. As I stood around the corner on the Rue de Sebastopol one afternoon next to an adjacent bike lane, I counted 30 cyclists pass by in 30 seconds.

“Even some people who used to say, ‘I will never ride a bike in Paris,’ are doing it now,” says Roudaut. “It’s a huge change. I think we all know at least one person who used to drive a car or a motorbike and has switched to a bicycle.”

Some of the shift began before Hidalgo. The previous mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, launched the city’s pioneering bikeshare program in 2007—one of the first large-scale systems of its kind in the world—and added some bike lanes. But Hidalgo went farther and faster. Part of the motivation came directly from voters. Before she was elected in 2015, Hidalgo used a participatory budgeting process to let citizens rank urban projects, and bike lanes ended up as the top priority.

The city rolled out a bike plan, though the new administration moved more slowly at first. A couple of years in to Hidalgo’s first term, only a small fraction of planned lanes had been built. Bike advocates at Paris en Selle started publicly mapping where new lanes were added to put pressure on the city, and the city ramped up its work.

When the pandemic hit, the city used the crisis to roll out a network of “coronapistes” or COVID bike lanes. Other cities did similar things, but Paris did more. “Paris was the boldest and bravest,” says Bruntlett. “The pandemic was an opportunity to take plans off the shelf and implement them very quickly. It was a way to challenge car-dominated thinking.” In a single year, the city built nearly as many bike lanes as it had in the previous five years, Moran says.

The Rue de Rivoli was the most audacious design. In a typical city, planners squeeze a new bike lane into the space at the side of the road. Instead, Hidalgo gave the majority of the wide street to a massive, bidirectional bike lane. Each direction covers the width of a typical car lane, not a standard narrow bike path. The usual incremental city response “is understandable, because that’s what human nature is like,” says Parisian bike advocate Stein van Oosteren. “But you have some people who look a little bit further and know that if they do not take big steps, they will go back to zero.”

When COVID hit, traffic disappeared from the street. “I spoke to her staff and they told me that when she’d seen that this huge highway was suddenly empty, she knew that she would never be able to make it empty again,” van Oosteren says. “So she said, ‘We’re going to keep it empty.’ And that is a brave decision.”

The city used temporary barriers at first. But when the pandemic ended, new bike lanes on Rivoli and throughout the city stayed in place. Paris invested more than 250 million euros to make dozens of kilometers of lanes permanent, expand the network, and add more bike parking.

The changes became a successful proof of concept. “It’s easier to make the argument when you have 25,000 to 35,000 cyclists a day on a street, and the numbers pop up almost overnight,” says Bruntlett. The shift in street design changed habits. A year after the first “corona” paths were built, 60% of users were new to cycling.

Paris’s bike plan called for the city to become “100% cyclable” by this year. Whether it’s gotten there is debatable—it’s not yet like Dutch cities that have comprehensive networks of protected bike lanes everywhere. Though the number of cars on city streets has dropped, traffic is still heavy in places, and intersections often feel unsafe. Three cyclists were recently killed. There’s less infrastructure in wealthier neighborhoods on the city’s western side, where making changes was more politically difficult. Still, it’s now possible to get almost anywhere on a bike. Even the suburbs, outside of Hidalgo’s control, have made major changes, like the two-way separated bike lane below in the town of Montreuil.

Car-free streets, under the radar

To begin to quickly pedestrianize the city, Hidalgo turned to schools—both because children are especially vulnerable to air pollution and because limiting cars near schools is something that people are less likely to oppose. When the city creates a “school street,” it typically closes off traffic just for the block in front of each elementary school. Because Paris is dense—with around twice the population density of New York City—there are public schools everywhere. It’s a somewhat stealthy way to pedestrianize an area that, taken together, is large.

“If you compare it to cities that have done similar schemes, like the low-traffic neighborhoods in London, it seems like Paris received less opposition,” says Valentin Carraud, a local cyclist and a doctoral student in urban planning. “It’s easier to justify. Okay, you’re closing some streets to cars, but if you can frame it as something for kids’ health and wellbeing, that’s easier.”

The projects are popular enough that some parents started asking for them. On a small street called the Rue de Providence, I met a mother who’d started pushing the city to close the street to traffic during the pandemic. Until then, there was a narrow sidewalk in front of the school, separated from the street with a metal barrier, and parents and kids crowded into the tiny space before and after school. The city didn’t have the resources to immediately shut down the street, but parents volunteered to set up temporary barriers during the morning pickup and drop-off hours.

“A friend said, ‘When we do this, we can show them the street isn’t that useful,’” said the parent, Zusanna Prekowska. “This was a proof of concept that demonstrated feasibility.”

The temporary closures worked, with only minor complaints from parents who wanted to drop off their kids by car, and the city later installed metal gates to permanently shut down the block. One former traffic lane is now completely filled with plants. The other lane is painted with games like hopscotch. I was there when school let out, and kids ran into the former street, playing and talking with friends.

Fire trucks and delivery vehicles can still access the painted part of the road if needed, using a key to open the gates at the end of the street. (While passing another school street, I watched a garbage truck drive inside and the driver quickly get out to lock up behind himself.)

It’s a place for kids to play, but also accessible to anyone in the neighborhood. I arrived before school ended, and two friends were sitting on a bench talking. An elderly woman rode through on a bike. “When you have children go to these schools, of course, as parents, you are happier, you feel much less stressed for your children,” says Hiba Debouk, head of urban planning at AREP, a firm that has designed multiple school streets for the city. “But people who live on these streets also talk about a net improvement of the quality of life because it’s much calmer, it’s much less polluted.” When she visits projects under construction, she says, neighbors call out from their balconies to tell her that they’re happy to see the street changing.

Beyond school streets, the city also blocked cars in a few other areas. I walked down Rue Mouffetard, a narrow, winding cobblestone lane lined with stores that had originally been a Roman road. Parts of it had already been closed to traffic, but I spoke with a woman working in a bookstore who told me that the section near her store had been fully pedestrianized in 2023, with a planter added nearby in the middle of the street. It hadn’t affected business, she said, but customers were safer. Deliveries were a little more challenging, but vehicles were still allowed during certain hours in the morning. It reminded me of something else I’d seen throughout the city: cargo bikes making deliveries instead of trucks, for everything from FedEx to local grocery stores.

Hidalgo’s changes to the city are not just about bikes. In every corner possible, Paris is replacing pavement with green space. That includes not just bigger projects, like redesigned squares, but smaller interventions. Until recently, a nondescript block on a street called Rue de la Croix Nivert, near a plumber and a hairdresser, was lined with parked cars. Then the city tore out the pavement, and last month, a crane carefully lowered trees into the former parking spaces.

The same thing has happened throughout the city. So far, Paris has replaced around 25,000 parking spaces. (The original goal was more ambitious—converting 60,000 spaces. It remains to be seen how far the next mayor will go.)

In one sense, the projects are mundane—walking down a block with street trees doesn’t seem unusual. But making the judgment that trees have more value to a city than storage for cars is a radical decision.

Paved squares have also been converted. In front of City Hall, an area about half the size of a football field is now what the city calls an “urban forest,” sitting on top of an underground parking lot. Instead of a conventional park, around 150 trees were planted in dense, somewhat messy-looking groves. Some of the trees were 30 feet tall when they were planted last year, giving the planting an immediate visual impact. Another urban forest at the Place de Catalogne added even more trees—270 larger trees, and 200 saplings.

The projects have a practical goal. As climate change progresses, Paris is experiencing more extreme heat. In a dense, heavily paved city, any green space can help reduce the urban heat island effect. Trees can provide critical shade. And in extreme rain, something that’s also becoming more common because of climate change, green spaces can help soak up flooding. They can also help bring some biodiversity back to the city.

But it’s equally a way to improve livability. The changes are more noticeable than the rollout of new bike lanes, says Carraud, one of the cyclists I spoke to. “Sometimes you walk around neighborhoods where you haven’t been for six months and you go, ‘Wow’—school streets just pop up,” he says. “And they’re usually really pleasant places.”

“I was determined to bring nature into the city and use all available spaces,” Hidalgo said at the recent opening of the new park. “We have beautified the city and improved the quality of life for residents. That’s what local elected officials are for.”

How other cities can copy Paris

Some mayors might question how feasible it is to replicate what Paris has done. The city was already walkable, with low rates of car ownership. Streets were laid out long before cars existed, unlike many streets in American cities. Still, the wide boulevards that Hausmann designed for Paris in the mid-1800s—partly to enable the easy flow of horse-drawn carriage traffic—quickly adapted to cars. By the 1970s, when then-Prime Minister Georges Pompidou opened the road next to the Seine to automobiles, he said, “France loves its cars.”

In the Netherlands, cities like Amsterdam also went through a 20th-century embrace of cars. But the anti-car shift there started long enough ago that it’s hard to remember a time when those cities weren’t biking havens.

“I think that American mayors have been told forever that they should be more like Copenhagen and Amsterdam,” says Moran. “But those are on a different planet in terms of bikability. What I like about the Paris case is these mayors have probably been to Paris at some point in their lives, and probably remember a time when it was more like their city in terms of being car-centric and noisy and all of these other things. In a short period of time, it’s changed. I think it’s more relatable.” In part, it’s more relatable because there’s still a quite a bit of car traffic left; the transition is still underway, and it’s easier to imagine the same traffic patterns superimposed on other cities.

Hidalgo had the advantage that the mayor of Paris is relatively powerful. One person told me that if Hidalgo decided she wanted to add a bike lane on a street, she could just do it. (It’s more complicated than that—the police can push back on changes on some streets, for example.) She also maintained support from a majority of the city council throughout her time in office. She was willing to make significant investments—bike infrastructure alone cost an estimated 400 million euros in the city budget. Still, other cities could choose to make similar changes.

“French cities do assign substantial power to the mayors and councils in power,” says Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute. “That said, her particular efforts, such as the implementation of bike lanes and the creation of pedestrian plazas, are well within the reach of most U.S. mayors with ‘strong mayor’ powers, meaning mayors in places like New York or Chicago.” There are still challenges, including the fact that some streets are owned and controlled by states, not cities. But it’s possible for American mayors to redesign streets more aggressively.

Cities could copy specific ideas like Paris’s take on school streets. In New York, for example, “you could take that temporary, interim approach with barricades and then make more permanent investments a block at a time,” says Lydon. “At the scale of all the public schools in New York, you’d make really big, lasting neighborhood change.”

Mayors could also learn from Hidalgo’s belief that meaningful change is possible, and her willingness to take risks and keep going under pressure. “I always say when I ride on a bike lane that I ride on political courage,” says van Oosteren.

“Nowadays, people come to Paris not only to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre but they come also to ride a bicycle on the Rue de Rivoli,” he says. “They know that when they’re riding on a bicycle there that they’re riding on a road that was a highway just a couple of years before, because it still has the profile of a highway. That is the thrill of change. People want to feel that change. They want to feel that it is possible. Once you feel that emotion, something happens to you. And then they go back to the country and then they say, well, we can actually repeat the experience that happened in Paris.”

The early-rate deadline for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter Awards is this Friday, April 10, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a senior writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to climate change and other global challenges, interviewing leaders from Al Gore and Bill Gates to emerging climate tech entrepreneurs like Mary Yap.. She contributed to the bestselling book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and a new book from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies called State of Housing Design 2023.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91509506/how-paris-redesigned-itself-to-be-a-city-of-bikes-not-cars

Source: Fast Company, Diana Budds
Photo: Melrose Library (Albert Vecerka)

The refreshed neighborhood landmarks balance historic preservation, modernization, and sustainability.

At the turn of the 20th century, the steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to New York to build libraries across the city. Leading architects of the time designed the branches, 67 in all, to look and function like civic temples with elaborate Beaux-Arts detailing, welcoming entrances, dignified reading rooms, and open stacks where patrons could freely browse. They quickly became important, and beloved, neighborhood establishments and remain so today. After more than a century of use, and ad hoc upgrades and adaptations that are also dated, the buildings are due for upgrades.

Last year, the New York Public Library (NYPL) completed a $176 million renovation of five Carnegie Libraries in The Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. They’re pilots of Carnegie renovations to come. Spearheaded by the architecture firms Mitchell Giurgola, which also developed design standards for the renovations, and CannonDesign, the climate-sensitive and community-informed transformations are models for balancing historic architecture and contemporary use. “The buildings are such a part of the fabric of the community and we wanted to double down on that,” says Kerry Gould, director of capital planning at NYPL. “They needed love, and they got it.”

A new approach for old libraries

Public libraries are the rare institutions with near-universal approval. According to a Pew study, 94% of Americans age 16 or older believe libraries improve quality of life. Perhaps because of this, the city has entered another golden age of architectural invention around them. Affordable housing crowns branches in Sunset Park, Inwood, and Grand Concourse; a recently completed branch in Greenpoint, which replaced a too-small library dating from the 1970s, doubles as an environmental education center; and a glimmering composition by the local artist José Parlá envelops the new Far Rockaway branch.

But ground-up contemporary buildings are only part of the story. The Carnegie renovations underscore how a preservation-focused approach can modernize the system while protecting important neighborhood landmarks and community anchors. As aging Carnegie Libraries become Apple stores, comedy clubs, and boutique hotels, or simply deteriorate until demolition is a foregone conclusion, New York is figuring out how to keep them—and keep them relevant.

“In architecture, ‘historic character’ used to be just about culture and preservation, and I think that’s really important,” says Carol Loewenson, an architect and partner at Mitchell Giurgola. “But saving what you have is also the most sustainable thing you can do. The continuity of old, new, and future is really what makes New York, and any place, thrilling.”

Carnegie libraries then and now

New York City has 216 library branches, which are managed by three systems: NYPL is responsible for 88 locations in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. (The Brooklyn Public Library oversees the borough’s 62 locations and the Queens Public Library has 66 outposts within its jurisdiction.) Of the 39 Carnegie Libraries originally within NYPL’s remit, 30 are still in operation.

They face similar issues related to operations and relevance. To wit: They were constructed before the Americans with Disabilities Act; before teens, who are avid patrons, were considered a distinct age and cultural group (until the 1940s, you were either a child or an adult); and before climate change became an urgent issue.

And while libraries maintain a mission to advance knowledge and strengthen communities, these institutions today do a lot more than circulate books; they serve as emergency cooling and warming centers, technology hubs where patrons can access computers and 3D printers, and more.

Because there are so many Carnegie Libraries in the city, the NYPL decided to approach their renovations systematically. Design standards could ensure stylistic consistency across the upgrades. It’s also practical: the more uniform the building management systems are, the easier repairs and maintenance are since crews have familiarity with the equipment. The standards include specifications for lighting, bookcases and millwork, circulation desks, how to integrate modern heating and cooling infrastructure, and methods for creating flexible-use space.

Before implementing these design standards, the NYPL handled Carnegie renovations differently. While the exteriors remained the same, interior overhauls looked like they belonged to different buildings. Renovations and repairs happened piecemeal as equipment reached the end of their useful life, and modifications accumulated to the point where changes obscured the buildings’ spirit.

“Very often we are doing necessity repairs and you’re sort of cobbling things together,” Gould says.

Despite needing upgrades, the original Carnegie buildings were innovative a century ago and remain hallmarks of good library design today thanks to their large windows that bathed interiors in daylight, spacious reading rooms with high ceilings, a central circulation desk, natural materials, and movable furniture.

“It seems so obvious, but people don’t always get it right with libraries,” Loewenson says. “And those fundamentals really do work. We’re doing an academic library right now and I just intuitively use the Carnegie standards and principles, and it just nails it. It’s kind of amazing.”

The architects emphasized those details while introducing energy efficient building systems (like triple-pane windows and sensor-operated environmental controls), amenities to better serve library patrons (like teen rooms), and improved accessibility (like adding elevators and ramps). Additionally, the library commissioned artwork that connects to each branch’s respective community, based on intel from engagement sessions.

Site-specific solutions

Each Carnegie library is different—some are freestanding structures, some are mid-block, and their sizes vary. While design standards informed the top-level approach for the renovations, “it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing,” Loewenson says. “You first figure out what you’ve got and then what the needs are and then you start adjusting.”

Historic preservation rules often informed how the architects approached the renovations. At 125th Street, a McKim, Mead & White branch dating to 1904, no additions could be visible from the street, which nixed moving all the mechanical systems to the roof. So instead, the team at CannonDesign, who oversaw this branch’s renovation, hunted for opportunities to make space inside.

Caretaker apartments originally occupied the top floor of Carnegie Libraries (someone needed to feed the coal furnaces 24/7) and over time, these rooms became convenient locations for HVAC equipment. Meanwhile, air handlers and ductwork have become smaller and more efficient since they first went into the libraries. Because of this, the architects could condense the systems into a compact footprint and turn some of the back-of-house areas into public space. At 125th, they were able to squeeze a teen area as well as staff offices into the top floor. Now people, not just machinery, get to enjoy the dramatic double-height level illuminated by clerestory windows.

“When we went into the design phase of these libraries, the amount of potential on the top floor, it was just incredible to see,” says Dan Sheen, an architect at CannonDesign. “It was about taking advantage of what was given to us and running iterations until we finally got to a point where it’s like, okay, this represents a modern space, but also pays homage to the original design when it was in its prime, too.”

Indeed, the renovated Carnegie Libraries look more like themselves, just better. They also perform at a higher level than before.

The Port Richmond branch, designed in 1905 by Carrere & Hastings, architects of the NYPL’s famed Fifth Avenue flagship, is now LEED Silver certified. Sheen and his team looked to Passive House design strategies to retrofit the building, including modifying the masonry walls (they installed mineral wool insulation and a smart vapor barrier on the inside face) and triple-pane wood windows for a tight thermal seal.

The Port Richmond reading room featured a slightly arched ceiling with ornamental crown moldings, which Sheen wanted to highlight. Instead of suspending a tangle of sprinkler systems, ductwork, and other life safety systems from the ceiling, he decided to drop the ceiling 12 inches and hide the infrastructure above it. The team consulted original drawings and also 3D scanned the detailing in order to faithfully recreate it.

Similarly, they also hid infrastructure behind walls, effectively shrinking the space by six to eight inches on each side. Loewenson and her team used similar techniques at the Hunts Point location, a Carrere & Hastings building from 1929. “There was more time in the design phase spent on what you don’t see, what’s hidden behind these walls than what the actual visitor experience is,” Sheen says. And instead of visually hefty rows of fluorescent lighting illuminating the reading rooms, there are now halo-like LED pendants throughout.

Because the Carnegie Libraries are on the smaller side, figuring out how to accommodate new uses was a challenge. At the Hunts Point library, Mitchell Giurgola integrated folding glass walls and doors into the reading rooms to define space while maintaining visual cohesion and daylight. At the Melrose branch—which suffered a fire in the 1940s that reduced the four-story building to two—Mitchell Giurgola was able to construct a new level that’s dedicated to children. Since few original architectural details remained here, the design team integrated more contemporary elements, like floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

Artwork was another important site-specific element for the renovations. NYPL hosted community engagement sessions with patrons to learn about what was most important to them and through this, they learned that the community around the Port Richmond branch, which is predominantly Hispanic, felt an affinity to butterflies and so a newly commissioned mural features the motif. “It really brings that sense of identity to the branch,” Gould says.

The future of NYC library renovations

The standards Mitchell Giurgola developed aren’t limited to the Carnegie Libraries. The design principles are relevant across the system, and so NYPL is using them to guide renovations across structures with different pedigrees.

Gould is currently working on an overhaul of the Edenwald library, a 1970s structure in the Bronx. It’s a squat “Lindsay Box,” the nickname for the inexpensive modular libraries constructed during the John V. Lindsay administration, with tiny windows. Gould plans to open the facade and better connect the interior to the neighborhood. “We’re using a lot of the same themes, like access to natural light,” she says.

With the five renovations now complete, NYPL hopes to receive additional capital funding from the city in order to modernize more Carnegie branches. “We want them to last for another hundred years,” Gould says. “As part of the fabric of New York, we think it’s just important to be stewards of these buildings and elevate them to what we think the public deserves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diana Budds is a New York–based writer interested in how design reveals stories about culture, policy, and history.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91508896/new-york-city-is-giving-its-iconic-carnegie-libraries-a-makeover

Source: Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: Courtesy of Lego

Lego’s designers took a lesson in Impressionism to create this wall-worthy set.

From afar, Lego’s new set inspired by Claude Monet’s painting Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies looks like a slightly more vivid version of the original. Step a bit closer, though, and you’ll find that its intricate brushstrokes are composed of Lego bananas, katana swords, and carrot tops.

The new 3,179-piece set was created in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Monet’s original 1899 artwork, inspired by his idyllic garden in Giverny, is on display. Lego’s designers spent more than a year working in tandem with the museum’s curators to faithfully re-create the original painting’s iconic Impressionist scene. The set will be available to the public starting on March 4 for $249.99.

Over the past few years, as Lego has begun to invest heavily in its sets and products targeted at an adult audience, its designers have had to develop new construction techniques to re-create a wide range of historical artworks. These include sets based on Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night and Sunflowers, which use chunky Lego bricks to represent thick layers of paint; a set based on Art Hokusai’s The Great Wave, which achieves a 3D effect though cleverly layered bricks; and a re-creation of Keith Haring’s dancing figures, which relies on clear Lego pieces to imitate Haring’s line work. The new Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies may be their most technically challenging effort yet.

How Lego’s designers cleverly mimicked Monet’s style

From the beginning, Lego’s collaboration with The Met was a hands-on process.

“This piece was chosen through close dialogue between The LEGO Group and The Met,” says Stijn Oom, a Lego designer. “Together, we identified a fan‑favorite artwork that would translate well into an immersive build. Throughout the process, we worked with curators, reviewed color references, and explored how to mirror the painting’s layered techniques with LEGO elements. The aim was to let the build itself echo the feeling of creating the original artwork, while giving fans new entry points into Monet’s world.”

The process started with Lego’s design team visiting The Met to see Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies in person. There, they got an up-close look at Monet’s image of the Japanese-style bridge arching over his backyard pond, rendered in soft hues and small, densely packed brushstrokes. As Oom’s team began work on the Lego version, Met staffers also made trips to Lego’s headquarters in Denmark to review their drafts.

In an interview with Artnet, Alison Hokanson, a European paintings curator at The Met, explained that the painting represented a major undertaking for Lego’s team because of its intricate Impressionist technique, which is difficult to replicate with small Lego pieces.

Oom describes the process as “both thrilling and challenging.” Because Lego’s color palette was “more limited than what Monet could mix on his canvas,” Oom’s team opted for a brighter palette and blended tones to strike the right color balance. Another key obstacle was accurately recreating the painting’s sense of scale and depth. To create the optical illusion of forced perspective, Lego’s designers carefully layered smaller, darker elements behind the bridge, while positioning larger, brighter elements in front.

While experimenting with ways to mimic Monet’s depictions of light and movement, Oom’s team stumbled across several clever uses for some unexpected Lego bricks. The work’s waterlily pads, for example, are made from a combination of tiles, painter’s palettes, brushes, and shields, all layered and overlapped to echo the varied thickness and direction of the real paint strokes. The willow tree in the work’s top left corner uses bars and carrot tops to mimic long, cascading green strokes. And in the vegetation under the bridge, horns, bananas, and katana swords are all carefully placed to guide the eye across the scene.

“There are plenty of delightful ‘wait, is that . . .?’ moments built into the model, as we used a diverse array of LEGO elements including many pieces chosen to reflect Monet’s love of the natural world,” Oom says, adding, “Those unexpected parts are what make the build so enjoyable. You’re not just recreating a masterpiece—you’re discovering it piece by piece.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Snelling is an editorial assistant for Fast Company with a focus on product design, branding, art, and all things Gen Z. Her stories have included an exploration into the wacky world of Duolingo’s famous mascot, an interview with the New Yorker’s art editor about the scramble to prepare a cover image of Donald Trump post-2024 election, and an analysis of how the pineapple became the ultimate sex symbol.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91493787/legos-new-monet-inspired-set-is-full-of-hidden-details

Source: MSN, Pauline Lacsamana
Photo: Courtesy of Ama

Why we love this deal

Owning a home is a milestone that many have dreamed about. But with rising prices, it’s a goal that feels less and less attainable. Homes can cost anywhere from $150K to millions of dollars, depending on your location and criteria. However, there’s a solution that many are turning to in lieu of a standard house, and that’s investing in a tiny home.

Believe it or not, a place you can get one from is none other than Amazon, the retailer that truly seems to sell everything. In addition to groceries and a new sectional sofa, you can add a tiny home to your cart and be well on your way to building a tiny but mighty dream home. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home caught our eye, and it boasts a cozy, retro design for under $40K.

Why do shoppers love it?

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median sale price of a home in the United States in 2025 was nearly $411K (AKA not cheap). As a result, tiny homes have risen in popularity due to their affordability and flexibility, but just because they’re more budget-friendly than a standard home doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice style, too. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home proves just that with a surprisingly chic and retro design that would easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more otherwise.

With an A-frame silhouette, this tiny house taps into the charm of mid-century modern style, but for significantly less. We fully get the appeal of an original mid-century house, but as is the case with many older homes, they typically need a lot of repairs and updates that can cut deep into your budget. This tiny home is the perfect compromise that allows you to start from scratch.

Despite being a tiny home, the A-frame design takes advantage of every inch of vertical space, making the end result spacious and airy. The home is customizable in many ways, fitting two to four bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. As a prefab house, the assembly is meant to be easy and completed quickly. Each piece is made of metal, and it utilizes steel panels to create a durable frame that can withstand harsh weather, from snowstorms to heavy rain.

The only catch is that you’ll need to hire professionals to install electrical and plumbing systems. We also suggest doing additional research to ensure you have all of the required permits and are abiding by laws, regulations, and restrictions for your city or state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/amazon-is-selling-a-cozy-a-frame-tiny-house-that-s-customizable-with-up-to-4-bedrooms-for-under-40k

Source: The Discoverer, Erin De Santiago
Photo: saiko3p/Shutterstock

Our oceans are one of our most precious, and endangered, resources. And whether you’re a diving buff, cruise lover, or just want to do your part protecting the oceans, there are some incredible places to learn about the world under the sea. From noted marine research facilities to underwater zoos, here’s a look at five jaw-dropping aquariums around the world. No scuba gear or certification necessary here.

Oceanographic Museum, Monaco

The building that houses the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco is worth a visit alone as the iconic structure was built on the side of Le Rocher cliff. This area of Monaco’s old town is known for its medieval windy lanes and stunning views. It features a Baroque Revival architectural style, took over ten years to build, and required 100,000 tons of stone. Prince Albert I, great-great-grandfather of H.S.H. Prince Albert II, was the museum’s founder. On the museum’s façade, don’t miss the names of 20 renowned oceanographic research vessels’ names inscribed into the frieze.

Visitors to the Oceanographic Museum can see over 6,000 specimens on display and learn more about the world’s oceans through its exhibits on sea-related objects like tools, model ships, weapons, sea animal skeletons, and more. Jacques Cousteau served as the museum’s director for just over 30 years, as well.

Monterey Bay Aquarium, USA

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is home to over 35,000 sea creatures that represent over 550 species, mostly all local marine life varieties. When it opened in 1984, it was the first aquarium to feature an exhibit of a living kelp forest. Monterey Bay Aquarium prides itself on its marine research and conservation efforts. This work includes the Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood advisory list. With around 200 exhibits in total, it’s no wonder why this aquarium is a must-see for visitors to Northern California.

The building where the aquarium is housed in is a defunct sardine cannery and has been recognized for its architectural achievements. It also helped lead to a revitalization of the cannery row area, providing additional things to do for visitors to Monterey Bay. If you’re a fan of Disney Pixar movies, you likely already know filmmakers made multiple research trips to Monterey Bay Aquarium to gain inspiration for the Marine Life Institute featured in the film ‘Finding Dory.’

AquaDom, Germany

If you find yourself in Berlin, don’t pass up the opportunity to have a cocktail underneath the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium In the Radisson Blu Hotel, you’ll find the Atrium Bar where you can imbibe while gazing up at the 82-foot high AquaDom. With one million liters of saltwater, a two-story interior elevator, and more than 1,500 fish housed here. It is part of the adjacent SEA LIFE Berlin.

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, Japan

Located at Ocean Expo Park in Okinawa, you’ll find the Churaumi Aquarium. Start by exploring the Coral Sea tank, a naturally-lit exhibit that showcases a large section of Japanese corals. The impressive cultivation of coral, about 450 colonies of 70 different types, is made possible through open tanks allowing in strong sunlight as well as the impressive system that supplies fresh seawater.

One of the other most impressive exhibits is the Kuroshio Sea tank. This tank is where some of the world’s biggest fish are, including manta rays and whale sharks. Don’t miss the Deep Sea tank either. Here you’ll find a variety of creatures you wouldn’t otherwise get to see as they live far below standard diving depths. You can find many of these creatures below 200 meters, including some bioluminescent types of marine life.

Dubai Mall Aquarium, United Arab Emirates

The Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo is located in a shopping mall of all places, and it’s one of the largest suspended aquariums in the world. There are over 33,000 specimens on display from 140 species of sea life, including an impressive number of sand tiger sharks. The aquarium reaches to the third floor of the mall and features a cool tunnel you can walk through and see huge stingrays and sand tiger sharks overhead. Want to get closer up? The Dubai Aquarium offers immersive experiences here, as well. If you have your swim gear, there are snorkeling and swimming with sharks excursions.

Dubai is a very layover-friendly city, with many people booking lengthy connections and using the opportunity to take a city tour for a few hours. The Dubai Mall has a guided private tour for those short on time. In an hour, you can explore all of the highlights, including a glass-bottom boat ride, submersible simulator, fish feeding, and a behind-the-scenes tour of the shark and crocodile exhibits.

About the Author

Erin De Santiago is a travel and food writer who writes for various publications and her own sites, including her award-winning blog, Our Tasty Travels. She’s explored over 70 countries in search of unique food and travel experiences.

https://www.thediscoverer.com/blog/jaw-dropping-aquariums-around-the-world

Source: Smithsonian Magazine, Emily Barske Wood
Photo: Peeps Marshmallow Chicks cooling on a conveyor belt before packaging at Just Born Quality Confections (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), 2023 Christopher Payne/Courtesy of the artist, © Christopher Payne/Esto

A collection of photos published by the New York Times Magazine in 2014 prompted Susan Brown to make a cold call. It wasn’t usually her style, but the pictures delighted her, and she felt compelled to get in touch with the photographer.

The photo essay showed intricate details from New England textile mills: hundreds of yarn bobbins at a carpet company, a worker removing defects from a floral fabric, a close-up of a sewing machine’s gears. The photographer was Christopher Payne, and he was New York-based. The images were part of his early forays into photographing American manufacturing. Brown praised his photos and asked how he’d executed some of the shots; she hoped to someday find the right opportunity to feature his work at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where she was, and still is, a curator. Payne was happy to connect, knowing museum curators are particularly choosy in selecting high-caliber art.

The occasion to collaborate has come more than a decade later. “Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne” will be exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum from December 12, 2025, through fall 2026. The display will feature more than 70 of Payne’s photos, including some never-before-seen work captured for the museum project.

Trained as an architect, Payne taught himself to take photos using design principles, drawing on his ability to visualize three-dimensional spaces on two-dimensional surfaces. He thought of photos like compositions—he created a stage that he fit the action onto.

“I think the advantage that [architecture] gives me, and also the burden, is that I tend to seek out geometric compositions in my work,” Payne says.

The photo projects he pursued often reflected his love for architecture, design and assembly. While working on his 2009 book, Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, he photographed abandoned mental hospitals across the country, which seemed to have grand exteriors, but dilapidated interiors.

“They were these cities within the cities,” Payne says. “I always liked photographing the farms, the workshops and the infrastructure that kept these massive, sprawling campuses going. Every hospital had that manufacturing component.”

Not long after Payne finished the asylum project, his mother suggested he check out an old yarn mill in Maine. His visit there felt like walking into a museum, and when he spoke with the mill owner, he learned of other companies in the Northeast that were remnants of the factories that powered the American Industrial Revolution. The mill project became the photo essay published by the New York Times Magazine.

Soon Payne’s curiosity expanded beyond the old mills in his corner of the country, and his expertise grew into capturing interesting manufacturing operations around the U.S. Companies and publications commissioned his work. He published a collection of photos from a Steinway piano factory in New York, photographed the production of Peeps marshmallow treats in Pennsylvania and learned how roller skates were made in Minnesota. He captured ​​the technicolor factory where Jelly Belly jelly beans were made in California, observed the race to produce coronavirus vaccine vials in New York and witnessed the laying of high voltage cable used for fiber optics in South Carolina.

Christopher Payne first toured the Astoria, New York-based Steinway factory in 2002 as an architect.

Both his father and grandmother played the piano, and after they died, he made it a goal to return to the factory for a photo project, seeking to show the beauty of the artistry and materials that go into making the iconic pianos.

Payne liked the creative challenge of finding beauty and order in places that were traditionally unphotogenic or cluttered, and he took pride in creating photos that showed industrial production in unexpected ways. He sought to photograph mass-produced goods, like American flags, as well as modern products, like computer chips.

Kathy Ryan, former director of photography at the New York Times Magazine, recalls that Payne’s project featuring one of the last pencil factories in the country “was one of the most reacted to, beloved photo essays” the magazine ever published. His photos transformed the pencils into monumental sculptures, she says.

“He’ll make a picture of something tiny, like a batch of pencils, and it looms large in his photo, and it looks like this big, gigantic, building-like edifice—and it’s pencils,” Ryan says. “But then he can also go in and photograph the largest jet engine you can imagine in an airplane manufacturing plant, and then that gets rendered in a smaller way.”

The strength of his eye for patterns and abstract art on a busy factory floor is perhaps matched only by his desire to get the perfect shot no matter how much time it takes.

Ryan tagged along with Payne as he took photos at the facility where specialists perform maintenance on New York City subway cars. He had a strong idea of the shot he wanted because he’d already watched their operations several times. And his obsession seemed to impress the workers, who stalled their progress to move the hoisted-up cars a few inches over at Payne’s request so he could get the best angle.

Most of his photo assignments take months to plan, and hours or days to capture. He jumps hurdles with the companies, learning what can’t be photographed due to safety protocols and for proprietary reasons. Some businesses momentarily stop production for him.

Payne observes factory workers and machines for long periods of time, finding people suitable for the photos he envisions: someone tall enough to fit well into the frame of equipment, or a friendly worker who is willing to cooperate as he repeatedly adjusts his lights or asks them to shift the placement of their hands.

“Structurally, clearly his training as an architect informs his work,” Ryan says. “Spiritually, his love and respect for the industrial worker and the craftsmanship of what they do also defines his work.”

In factory workers, Payne saw a microcosm of the U.S.—young and old, immigrant and American-born, people with soiled aprons and those with clean white suits—all working together side by side. “It seems like it’s one of the few places in this country where democracy still works, because everyone has to work together toward a common goal,” Payne says. “If people aren’t working together in a factory, then it doesn’t work.”

Factory visits around the country broadened Payne’s understanding of the challenges facing American manufacturing. Many assert that global competition has hampered a resurgence in U.S. manufacturing, he says, but he also heard from factory leaders that it’s difficult for them to find enough skilled workers because the country has not prioritized vocational education.

Payne pursued his photo book Made in America, published in 2023, to share the highlights of his industrial photos. Curator Susan Brown reached out to him in January 2024 to explore an exhibition at Cooper Hewitt. The museum has never displayed a large-scale photography show. But Brown felt Payne’s photos were the right project to represent the entire country as the Smithsonian commemorates the United States turning 250 in 2026.

“It’s a very American project,” Payne says. “I love this country, and to me, this is sort of what I’m trying to do to be a good American, is to try to show people how important manufacturing is and to honor craft and manual labor. … The places that I photograph exist in the public discourse, but few of us know what factories actually look like.”

Payne’s images could also educate Cooper Hewitt visitors about manufacturing, a key part of the design process seldom explored at the museum, Brown notes.

“We collect prototypes and we collect sketches and concept drawings and unfinished products, but in between the prototype or the concept drawing and the finished product, there’s a really big step that we usually don’t get to share,” Brown says.

That’s what makes Payne’s work particularly compelling. He uncovers how the creation of useful objects, from pencils to wind turbines to electric vehicles, can be beautifully photographed. He shows us the art of the in-between.

About the Author

Emily Barske Wood is an Iowa-based journalist. She works part-time as the special projects editor for the Des Moines Business Record, and her work has been published by the Guardian, the Poynter Institute, and NPR’s Public Editor team. She recently completed a Master of Fine Arts in narrative nonfiction through the University of Georgia and is working on a book project that will be published by the University of Nebraska Press about a tornado that hit her hometown. You can follow her work on Instagram @emilybarskewood.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/see-amazing-images-that-reveal-the-strange-otherworldly-beauty-hidden-in-american-factories

Source: Dezeen, Nat Barker
Photo: Courtesy of Nike

Sportswear giant Nike has repeatedly sought to revolutionise footwear. In this roundup, we collect nine innovative projects from the brand covered on Dezeen.

Nike Mind 001 and Mind 002

Nike describes its recently launched Mind 001 trainer and Mind 002 mule as its “first neuroscience-based footwear”.

The shoes, which were created using data collected from brain scans in the brand’s new Mind Science Department, contain 22 foam nodes on the sole that move and compress underfoot, sending soothing messages to the brain.

“This is just the beginning,” Nike chief science officer Matthew Nurse told Dezeen. “Once you understand how sensory feedback influences focus and recovery, that insight can shape everything – from training shoes that calm pre-competition nerves to recovery slides that help reset the mind after.”

Project Amplify

Also recently unveiled by Nike was a prototype design for a motorised exoskeleton-like device that attaches to the lower leg and provides a power boost for running or walking by helping to lift the wearer’s heel.

Developed in collaboration with robotics company Dephy, the product is still in still in the testing phase, with plans for a consumer version “in the coming years”.

Nike GO FlyEase

Released in 2021, the Go FlyEase can be put on or taken off hands-free thanks to a specially developed hinge system in the sole. Nike billed the trainer as an example of accessible design useful for people who might struggle to tie shoelaces.

It built on earlier shoes in the FlyEase range that used an openable heel.

Nike Hyperadapt 1.0

Another example of Nike’s attempts to change how we put on our shoes came in the form of the Hyperadapt 1.0 in 2016. These self-lacing trainers contain tiny electric motors and sensors that automatically tighten the laces when the wearer puts them on.

The shoes were inspired by the 1989 time-travel movie Back to the Future Part II, in which the protagonist Marty McFly is transported to 2015 and puts on a pair of Nike sneakers that tie themselves.

Nike later adapted the technology for a laceless basketball shoe, the Adapt BB.

Nike VaporFly Elite

Possibly the most talked-about shoe ever made, Nike’s Vaporfly triggered a revolution in running-shoe design. The brand began distributing prototypes to its elite athletes in 2016 to sensational results at that year’s Olympic Games, and marathon world records were later smashed by runners wearing Vaporflys.

Featuring an extremely lightweight and extra-thick ZoomX foam sole embedded with a springboard-like carbon-fibre plate, the Vaporfly was so effective that some argued it provided an unfair advantage.

Dezeen has previously plotted a detailed timeline of the battle between Nike and its arch rival Adidas to develop the ultimate running shoe.

Nike Zvezdochka shoe designed by Marc Newson

In 2004, the highly influential designer Marc Newson developed a shoe for Nike consisting of four interchangeable parts: an insole, an outsole, an inner sock and an injection-moulded outer cage perforated with holes.

Ahead of a 2014 reissue, Newson told Dezeen in an interview that it was “revolutionary” as one of the first times a shoe had been manufactured in a mould rather than stitched together like a garment.

Then-Nike CEO Mark Parker told Dezeen that the Zvezdochka had been an important step in other footwear breakthroughs at the company.

Nike x Hyperice massaging boots

Working with health-tech company Hyperice, Nike last year unveiled a boot that massages the wearer, intended to help athletes warm up and decompress.

Air “bladders” inside the shoe inflate and deflate to massage the foot and ankle, with heating elements to help target achy tissue.

Power comes from a battery in the sole, while a button on the heal adjusts the level of compression and warmth.

Nike ISPA shoes

Almost all shoes are nearly impossible to recycle, because it’s very difficult to separate them into their constituent materials.

Nike – which is the world’s biggest producer of shoes – took a step towards addressing this issue with a pair of modular trainers that can be easily disassembled. Instead of being held together by glue, they consist of three interlocking parts.

However, in a later interview with Dezeen, Nike chief design officer Martin Lotti said that material choice is more important to reducing the environmental impact of the company’s footwear products.

Nike unveils “world’s first” running shoes with 3D-printed uppers

In 2012, Nike developed Flyknit. This technology combines strands of polyester yarn to produce shoes with lightweight, almost seamless uppers that feel like a sock and are made in one piece to reduce manufacturing waste.

Nike began applying Flyknit to many of its sports shoes, and it formed the upper for the aforementioned Vaporfly Elite. Despite enjoying huge success with that shoe, Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge had one piece of feedback: it absorbed water, meaning the shoe got heavier during the race.

In response, Nike’s designers came up with Flyprint for Kipchoge’s shoes at the 2018 London Marathon. Instead of being woven from fabric, it was 3D-printed from a plastic filament. The brand claimed they were the first running shoes in the world to have 3D-printed uppers.

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/11/09/nike-innovative-trainers-roundup

Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: Dave Burk/© SOM

Following a long tradition, after the Games the site will be used for affordable student housing.

When athletes arrive in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics, they’ll find themselves living on top of what was once a bustling 19th-century rail yard. The newly revealed athletes village is located in the city’s historic Scalo di Porta Romana district—and when the Games are over, it’ll be converted into Italy’s largest-ever affordable student housing development.

The Olympic Village design was led by the global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). It includes six mass-timber residential buildings, two former train repair sheds that have been renovated into communal spaces, and 40,000 square meters of green space. After the Winter Olympics take place, the village will be transformed into 1,700 student apartments in time for the 2026-2027 school year.

The repurposing of the 2026 athletes village follows a long history of similar past efforts, including converting former athlete housing into resorts, luxury condos, and mixed-use developments—all of which have achieved varying degrees of success.

Inside the 2026 Athletes Village

Photos of Milan’s Scalo di Porta Romana district from the early-20th century paint a picture of an ultra-industrial zone populated by factories, smokestacks, and railway cars. Today Milan’s administrative body, the Comune di Milano, is in the midst of a multiyear project to convert the district into a sprawling neighborhood complete with green space and commercial and residential zones. Part of that plan includes first transforming the former rail yard into a global destination for the Olympics and, later, a student housing development.

“Porta Romana is a unique neighborhood,” says Colin Koop, design partner at SOM. “Originally situated outside the city walls, the neighborhood developed as a unique mix of industrial buildings, factories, and farms driven by its adjacency to the gate to Rome. Our project takes direct inspiration from these practical, utilitarian buildings in the siting and composition of our six, interconnected buildings.”

The site chosen for the athletes village, located on the southwest corner of the former rail yard, included two abandoned train repair sheds—which, according to Koop, were found “in various states of ruin.” To preserve the historic buildings, his team embarked on an extensive reinforcement of their existing structures. To do this, they had to entirely replace both roofs to meet seismic requirements, reconstruct several supporting walls, and rework crumbling facades with careful attention to the preservation of the buildings’ architectural character.

“The interiors are largely defined by the restored timber structure and largely left as an open hall, similar to their original spatial layout,” Koop says. During the Olympics, the two buildings will serve various uses for competing athletes, including a dining hall, information and logistics center, and communal lounge.

Beside the renovated buildings are six new apartment complexes, each composed primarily of single-occupancy rooms with their own bathrooms. Every floor includes amenities like communal kitchens, study rooms, and lounges, making them easily convertible into future student housing, Koop says. Fitness centers, screening rooms, and laundry facilities are incorporated on the ground floor.

Where the buildings truly stand out from previous athlete housing, though, is in their pocket courtyards and climbing greenery. These green spaces are designed both to pay homage to Milan’s architecture and to incorporate natural daylight in every room.

“Milan has a rich tradition of courtyard buildings with vertical gardens climbing up their facades,” Koop says. “We were inspired by these beautiful private terraces, which soften the city’s stone, brick, and plaster facades with rich palettes of plants and trees. We set out to extend this tradition through the creation of two grand facades of social terraces, which cover the eastern and western portions of the site.”

By the time students are ready to move in, Koop adds, the buildings’ incorporated irrigated planters and metal cables will have allowed plants to cover the facades entirely, “enveloping the student spaces in a canopy of green.”

This is far from the first time that an athletes village site has been repurposed after the Olympics. In fact, the practice has been around for decades.

After the 1996 Atlanta Games, athlete housing was converted into student dorms that were first used by Georgia State University and later by Georgia Tech. Following the nearly $12 billion 2012 Summer Olympics in London, housing in the city’s East Village neighborhood was turned into mixed-use residential and commercial space, with some of the former flats retailing for as much as $1 million back in 2021. After the 2008 Games in Beijing, the Olympic Village site became public parkland and memorial spaces. In Sydney, following the 2000 Summer Games, the village was transformed into a residential suburb.

These transformations have sometimes proved unsuccessful, or even damaging to local communities. The 2016 Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro was the largest in the history of the Games at the time, but after the athlete housing was converted to luxury condos, the space reportedly fell vacant, coming to serve for some as a symbol of the Games’ wasteful excesses.

Back in 2024—when Paris was preparing to turn its athletes village into sustainable housing and office space—political scientist Jules Boykoff told Fast Company that attempts to reuse Olympic infrastructure often fail.

“Unfortunately, the Olympics have an ignominious tradition of creating ‘white elephants,’ or stadiums and other venues that remain underused and expensive to maintain in the wake of the Games,” he said. He added that organizers often make promises to build social housing that fall through, like in Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012, when “both projects ended up being essentially nationalized, paid for by taxpayers, and then promises around social housing mostly evaporated in the face of market exigencies.”

In the case of the 2024 Olympic Village in Paris, established residents reported during construction that they were forced out of their homes to make way for the new housing. Currently, Paris is in the process of converting the Olympics infrastructure into a new district, though concerns around gentrification remain.

The Olympic Games are a limited-time event, notorious for passing through the host city in the blink of an eye. Whether the SOM team’s vision for the Milan site lasts long after 2026 remains to be seen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Snelling is an editorial assistant for Fast Company with a focus on product design, branding, art, and all things Gen Z. Her stories have included an exploration into the wacky world of Duolingo’s famous mascot, an interview with the New Yorker’s art editor about the scramble to prepare a cover image of Donald Trump post-2024 election, and an analysis of how the pineapple became the ultimate sex symbol.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91421857/milan-2026-olympic-housing